After a trans-identified boy walked into the girls’ bathroom in a Santa Fe public elementary school last year, the Santa Fe School District began to face scrutiny from parents over the district’s gender policy that hid the student’s “gender identity” from parents. The district has since updated its wellness rules to include parents in the official gender and name change process, but some parents are still concerned about the district’s policies, saying that the updated rules only pay lip service to parental rights.
“It was more of a ‘let’s-just-do-this-and-shut-them-up’ situation instead of ‘let’s hear these parents out,’” Jenna Trujillo, whose son attends Amy Biehl Community School, told IW Features.
According to documents provided to IW Features, the revised Administrative Regulation (AR) 330 requires “parent/legal guardian participation” when a student requests official changes to their information in the district’s student information system. However, AR 330 still requires staff to address students by “preferred” names and pronouns “regardless of whether the student has included their preferred name and gender marker in the student information system, obtained a legal name change, or updated legal sex designation.”
Additionally, AR 330 allows students to use opposite-sex private facilities like bathrooms, locker rooms, and overnight trip facilities so long as their official school records reflect their “gender identity.”
The separate Board Policy 330, which remains unchanged, also allows students to participate in opposite-sex activities “in accordance with their gender identities.” This policy explicitly states, “SFPS will treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations.”
Trujillo told IW Features that she discovered the policies had been updated on August 20 after asking her son’s school, Amy Biehl Community School, for clarification on the district’s gender guidelines ahead of his first year there.
According to emails reviewed by IW Features, Trujillo’s inquiries were directed to SFPS’s wellness department, which oversees AR 330. And while AR 330 is not available on the wellness department’s webpage, it offers a summary of it and notes, “Students have a right to keep their transgender status confidential, and may choose who and how this is shared.”
Trujillo said she was already nervous for her son to start kindergarten this year after she learned about Santa Fe schools’ gender policies. As IW Features previously reported, the district offered gender support plans to students of any age, without requiring licensed medical or mental health provider involvement or even parental notice.
“It shocked me,” Trujillo said after she learned about a boy being allowed to use the girls’ bathroom at a Santa Fe district school. “I couldn’t believe how that was handled.”
The new policy, she believes, does not truly address parental concerns or offer parents full transparency into their children’s education.
“It makes me feel like I cannot trust anyone with my kids,” she said, explaining that her family is Catholic and, therefore, does not teach their children gender ideology.
The district has publicly addressed the purpose of its wellness department in a Facebook video podcast. However, Trujillo noted that the podcast did not address the wellness department’s gender policies. In fact, when she tried to share her concerns and the articles she’d read about the district, she said her comments were deleted.
Meanwhile, as students return to school this year, the district has sent some students home with gender worksheets that asked for preferred pronouns and names, according to parent Blake Keller*. Keller told IW Features that his child returned home from school with the worksheet and instructions that students should not bring the form to their parents.
“I was signing other forms that required my signature, [and] then I got to this form that didn’t have a spot for me to sign,” Keller told IW Features. “[I] read the part where it said, ‘Would you like us to not disclose this or use this [preferred] name with your parents?’ And I thought, ‘Why would they be withholding information about my child from their legal guardian? That doesn’t seem right.’ Matter of fact, it seems like a deliberate green light for kids to keep all kinds of secrets from their legal guardians. That’s not OK with me.”
Parents like Trujillo and Keller say that Santa Fe Public Schools has a long way to go in restoring transparency. If students are still being socially transitioned without parents’ knowledge, then changes to official records mean little in the wake of day-to-day classroom practices.
“[My husband and I] are born and raised in Santa Fe,” Trujillo said. “This is not how we were raised in schools.”
Trujillo said she raised her concerns with the mayor of Santa Fe and the New Mexico Department of Education, but she has not gotten the clarity or transparency she needs to feel safe sending her son to school in Santa Fe.
“I’ve tried every avenue I know of to reach out,” she said.
Trujillo added that the district’s gender policies are making her family re-examine their options for their children’s education, but the alternatives would require her family to significantly change and uproot their lives.
“New Mexico is home for us — Santa Fe, born and raised here,” Trujillo said. “I went to school at [the University of New Mexico]. Me and my husband moved back to raise our family here. We love Santa Fe. We love New Mexico… [but] it’s just really making us reconsider where we live, or do we homeschool? How do we afford living? If I homeschool and we have to cut our salaries, we’re going to have to sell our house. It really has us almost in a panic mode.”
*A pseudonym has been assigned to this storyteller.
